Edward Hayes Plumptre

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Edward Hayes Plumptre (August 6, 1821 – February 1, 1891), English divine and scholar, was born in London, United Kingdom.

A scholar of University College, Oxford, he graduated with a double-first class in 1844, and in the same year he was elected Fellow of Brasenose College. He was ordained in 1847, and shortly afterwards appointed chaplain, and then professor of pastoral theology, at King's College London.

In 1863 he was given a prebendal stall at St Paul's, and from 1869 to 1874 he was a member of the committee appointed by Convocation to revise the authorized version of the Old Testament. He was Boyle lecturer in 1866–1867 (Christ and Christendom), and Grinfield lecturer on the Septuagint at Oxford 1872–1874. After successively holding the livings of Pluckley and Brickley in Kent, he was installed in 1881 as dean of Wells.

Plumptre was a man of great versatility and attained high reputation as a translator of the plays of Sophocles (1865) and Aeschylus (1868), and of the Divina commedia of Dante (1886). In verse his main achievements were Lazarus (1864), and Master and Scholar (1866).

Among his many theological works may be mentioned An Exposition of the Epistles to the Seven Churches (1877), The Spirits in Prison (1884), The Book of Proverbs (which he annotated in the Speaker's Commentary), the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and II Corinthians, in Bishop Ellicott's New Testament Commentary, and Life and Letters of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells (1888).